Clean out dirt from rear window pocket?

[rich006]

Any ideas how to get dirt out of the pocket inside the quarter panel skin, forward of the wheel? It's a '74 Swinger that will once again be my daily driver as soon as I finish this body repair.

Background: The rear window sits inside the forward part of the quarter panel skin. To deal with some rust in the lower part of that panel (where it overlaps the rocker panel), I cut open the quarter from the outside and found it's full of shattered window glass and dirt. The dirt blocks the drainage channels that should keep this pocket dry. I need to get that stuff out but I don't want to remove the whole quarter skin because there's a lot of good metal at the bottom (the rust is higher up, at the top of the glass/dirt pile). I think the pocket is too narrow to get a vacuum hose down there from inside the car, although I have already removed the back seat and the vinyl trim panel.

 

[DrCharles]

When I needed to vacuum out some small places, I duct-taped a length of 1" heavy-wall vinyl tubing to the end of my shop-vac hose. Have you tried something similar, or even smaller diameter?

 

[Cuda Al]

Pull the plugs and hose it out? medium pressure.
I've done this on a project car, never a finished car.

or an air blower and then vacuum, or together.


Alan

 

[rich006]

This isn't an area with plugs, just small drainage creases molded into the low points of the panel at the pinch weld. I fished out the broken glass one piece at a time with a wire and a painter's 10-in-1 tool that I stuck in through the holes I had already cut out of the quarter skin. Once I had all the glass pieces out I flushed the dirt out with water from a hose and then acetone from a squirt bottle, then I sprayed it with rust reformer.